Can the methods of the ancients really feed the current population of Sri Lanka? Are we agriculturally self-sufficient? A grain of rice is a wonderful thing, but we need several grains of salt to take this mytho-history at face value.
March 24, 2022
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Image: Claudius Ptolemy’s map of ancient Taprobane. Credit: archeology.lk
Story & Analysis by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Edited by Aisha Nazim Translated by Mohammed Fairooz and Nishadi Gunatilake
Once upon a time, or so the story goes, Sri Lanka was a self-sufficient agricultural nation. We grew our own rice, we fed millions, we didn't need fertilizer, we didn’t need open economies, and we certainly didn’t need these new-fangled technologies and expensive imports to pull it off.
If you’re a Sri Lankan, you’ve heard this story at some point.
As talking points from a politician, as off-hand references from journalists, as ‘dad wisdom’ repeated at the kadey, or after a few drinks and bites. It’s ubiquitous.
Agricultural self-sufficiency (and thus, food security) is an important goal. On a basic, common-sense level, it prevents our food supply from being at the mercy of global supply chain disruptions.
The problem is that the story we tell ourselves doesn't quite fit the data.
Firstly, rice is our most important crop, with the majority of the agricultural workforce dedicated to its production. However, we have been importing milled rice at least since 1960 [1].
Chart showing milled rice imports by year from 1960 to 2021. The decades leading up to the 2000s were heavy on imports to the tune of hundreds of thousands of metric tons annually.
As for wheat: Sri Lanka does not produce wheat, and has always relied on importing wheat for local flour mills. As of late, we’ve begun importing wheat flour directly.
https://notioncharts.io/embed/charts/f8f89e55-2dba-4feb-b508-685eb64d01cd
Lentils, sugar, fruit, milk and milk products - while there is some amount of local production, we rely on imports on all of these things. In the past sixty years, the closest we’ve ever come to being completely self-sufficient is 2006, and that was only in rice.
Think about what this indicates: every person alive right now has consumed (if not lived on) imported food, regardless of whether we ran a closed economy (pre-1977) or an open, liberalised economy (post-1977). We are not, and have not been, agriculturally self-sufficient. Such a time has not existed in recent memory.
Sri Lanka has been cultivating and trading agricultural goods for centuries. That much we know: maritime trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia used this place as a hub.
Often referred to as the ‘granary of the East’ or peradiga dhaanyaagaaraya in Sinhala, rice and other locally grown produce fed the residents of the island, while also forming a component of goods traded with other countries. At this stage in history, Sri Lankan farmers are believed to have used techniques such as animal manure, crop residue, crop rotations, shifting cultivation, and crop diversification.